*
The alarm rouses one of the newborns in the spa. She is lying face-down in the hot tub. Her eyes are open in the water. She is in pain, but she is used to that. She struggles to lift her head up above the still surface and peer around for the source of the hateful noise.
*
Adam, standing further astern on the same deck, studying a deck plan, puts a hand against the faux-mahogany wall of the Charisma and feels the silence of the engines. He remembers the engine room is next to the car deck: the only place he hasn’t been to look for his mother. She must be the one who stopped the engines. Running his finger along the route to the car deck, he knows she has to understand why he has done what he has done: that this is for her sake too. She just has to free herself of the old preconceptions. He pulls a pass from his pocket and starts walking towards the stairs.
*
The first person infected on board is still sitting on the floor of his drunk tank. He has clapped his hands over his ears and is screaming to drown out the klaxons. The humans in the cells next to his are awake too, calling for help, banging on their doors, but no one is coming.
In the suite, the former Eurovision star is walking around smashing lamps. The faint flickering light hurts his eyes. The blaring of the alarm stabs at his ears. The floor is no longer vibrating under his feet. The Charisma is not going to reach Åbo. It feels so unfair. He is convinced the people who escaped from the mess did this. This is not how it was meant to go. He should have killed Adam’s mother. He should have killed them all. The klaxons blare again, shredding any conscious thought.
*
The air on the car deck is shimmering with fumes. The dark-haired woman is swinging her ice-axe ever faster, ever more resolutely. Petrol splashes her dress and seeps across the floor. Diesel gushes out when she punctures a tank on the side of a lorry. The sound of the blaring klaxons is more than she can endure, but it is almost over. Soon, everything will be over.
Marianne
‘I can’t breathe,’ Marianne gasps. ‘I can’t breathe.’
She is panting and clinging to Madde’s arm, dizzy from lack of oxygen. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t force enough air into her lungs. She doesn’t know if the lights in the hallway are flickering or if she is about to faint.
‘We’re almost there,’ Madde tells her.
‘I need to go outside. I need air.’
Everything is so different, so quiet between the blares of the klaxons. No more humming of engines under their feet. It’s as incomprehensible as the Earth itself grinding to a halt, because the Baltic Charisma is her whole world now.
Next to her, Madde is crying, big tears rolling down her chubby cheeks, but Marianne can’t cry. She looks over her shoulder. No one seems to be following them and the mangled bodies they pass are still motionless.
Every once in a while a door opens and people poke their heads out, ask them if they know what is going on, if they are sinking, if there is a fire. She can see their fear, but she’s unable to reassure them. At any time it could be something else opening one of the doors or bursting from a side passage, ready to kill her and Madde, like they killed Vincent. Like they killed Göran, before he became one of them.
They finally reach the glass door at the end of the hallway. Madde pushes it open and the first waft of cold, fresh air chills Marianne. She tries not to look at the bodies they have to step over as Madde leads her to the railing; she tries to ignore that the deck is sticky with drying blood.
They go to stand at the prow. Marianne tries to focus on the water, the waves rippling towards her in never-ending patterns. There is just a gentle lapping against the hull now, so different from the rushing and foaming last night. Strands of cloud are moving rapidly across the sky, darker grey against lighter, like a film played at the wrong speed. She finally manages to pull air all the way down when she breathes; the oxygen almost makes her dizzy. She lets it wash through her lungs as the klaxons blare yet again.
Madde shivers in her flimsy, see-through mini-dress. Marianne puts her arms around her and feels the soft body against her own. And Madde puts her head on her shoulder, crying harder.
She is even more scared than Marianne, and that makes Marianne pluck up courage, simply because she has no choice. They can’t both fall apart at the same time.
‘I’m sure they’ll be here from the mainland soon,’ she says. ‘Someone’ll come for us. We’ll be home before we know it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Madde says, ‘I’m sorry I just took off. I was so scared and—’
The rest of what she says is inaudible. Marianne just murmurs soothingly and strokes her back.
‘—my fault Vincent is dead!’ Madde sobs.
‘No,’ Marianne says. She shuts her eyes, but that only makes Vincent’s face in the stairwell appear all the more clearly. So she opens them again, squinting against the wind. ‘No, it’s my fault. He tried to make me run away from there much earlier, but I … I couldn’t.’
She had been hoping it would feel better if she said it out loud, but the opposite is true. It is getting harder to breathe again.
‘But if I hadn’t taken off …’ Madde sobs against her neck. ‘Or if I had come back sooner …’
‘It wouldn’t have mattered. And you did come back.’ Marianne shouts to make herself heard over another blare of the alarm. ‘I’m not sure I would have been brave enough.’
‘I wasn’t brave. It was just even worse to be alone.’
‘Listen to me. It wasn’t your fault.’
Madde pulls free of her embrace, wipes her eyes and takes a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t yours either,’ she says, and turns back towards the ship, raising her eyes.
She is almost beautiful in the wavering light of the lanterns.
Marianne turns as well, realises what Madde is looking for and immediately spots the windows of the suite, four floors up. She feels like she can make out movements behind them, but the lights are out and the faint light out here is reflected in the glass.
‘It’s his fault,’ Madde says. ‘If we had still been up there, we would have been safe. Safer, anyway.’
Marianne nods.
‘And we are getting off this fucking boat,’ Madde continues, turning to Marianne. ‘We just have to get up to the life rafts.’
‘Yes.’
Marianne thinks she can hear muffled screaming from inside the ship. A new blaring from the klaxons drowns it out. She looks at Madde, who is pointing.
‘They’re here,’ she says.
Marianne turns to the glass door they just came out through. Some of them are approaching it. There is no mistaking that slow, determined walk.
They run to the other side of the bow deck and peer in through the identical glass door there. There are more of them in the corridor on this side too. And they are on their way out.
‘Fuck!’ Madde exclaims. ‘Fuck, there’s nowhere to go.’
Marianne looks at the bow deck, allows herself to see the bodies strewn everywhere for the first time. There’s a pile of them right next to the railing.
The idea is so revolting she immediately dismisses it. But then she glances at Madde and knows she has to try.
The alarm blares again, then abruptly falls silent.
Filip
Marisol and he have finally managed to turn the alarm off. They are standing in the general manager’s office staring at the microphone in front of them. Filip is thinking about Mika, wondering how many times he has held it.
‘Do you want to do it?’ he says.
She shakes her head. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say,’ she says.
‘Me neither.’
The truth is that he is afraid his voice is going to betray him. He is so tired. They are so close, and yet it feels insurmountable.
They are going to get in the life rafts. They are going to wait for help. And then what?
I wouldn’t get into a raft with any of the passengers anyway. What if one of them changes while you’re ou
t there, bobbing on the waves?
And he can’t even be sure he isn’t infected himself. His left hand reflexively reaches up to his lips. They sting to the touch. He scrubbed so thoroughly, but …
‘How are you doing?’ Marisol says.
He shakes his head. ‘I just don’t know how I’m supposed to make it sound like … like I have any faith in this myself.’
She puts her arm around him. ‘You know what?’ she says. ‘I quit just a few days ago.’
Filip realises that he is not surprised. Wasn’t he thinking just that to himself as recently as last night? That she was going to leave the Charisma sooner or later?
‘I was going to tell you sometime this shift,’ she adds, looking downcast.
He tries to smile. ‘After tonight, I might want to quit too.’
‘About time,’ she says with a small laugh. Then she turns serious again and takes his hand. ‘I’m pregnant, that’s why. I’m going to start working in my aunt’s café instead.’
Filip’s smile grows wider, and this time it’s genuine. ‘I should have figured that out already, shouldn’t I?’ he says.
‘Probably.’
‘That’s why you never come out with us after work any more.’
Marisol shrugs with a grin.
‘You’re going to be a really great mum,’ he says. ‘If you’re tough enough to handle the clientele at Starlight at three in the morning, you can deal with any toddler tantrum.’
‘Now do you see why we have to make it through this? Both of us? Because I was thinking you might be the godfather, actually.’ She says it flippantly, but she almost looks embarrassed. ‘If anything were to happen to me …’
‘Nothing’s going to happen to you,’ he cuts her off.
She lets go of his hand, looking like she has more to say, but then she heaves a sigh and picks up the microphone.
‘All right,’ she says. ‘Let’s get this done.’
Calle
It had been his idea that they go here to look for signs of a fire on board. He regretted it as soon as they opened the door, but Albin and Lo barely reacted. He can’t help but wonder what all of this is going to do to them.
Bosse is slumped in his chair. Someone has thrown a fleece blanket over him. It is sopping with blood where his face would be. His arms dangle limply by his sides, his curled fingers almost touching the floor.
Calle carefully grabs the backrest from behind, trying not to touch the body as he pushes the chair aside. The chair bumps over a cord, making Bosse’s head roll onto his chest. But the blanket stays on. Thankfully.
Antti steps up to the desk and starts pushing buttons at random. Calle looks around the office and spots the phone in a pool of blood on the floor. It’s in pieces. He curses.
The different camera perspectives flash by on the screens. In the hallway above them, on deck six, a handful of passengers are peeking out of their cabins. Their faces are spectral in the faintly flickering emergency light. How many are acting like Mika, trying to hide that they’ve been bitten? How many haven’t even realised themselves?
Antti pushes more buttons and the tax-free shop appears on the screens. Its glass doors have been smashed, broken bottles and discarded packaging litter the floor and bodies are scattered across the carpet outside.
Come on, Calle thinks when they see the information desk, the closed door to the general manager’s office where Filip and Marisol should be. Say something already. I need to know you’re okay.
New hallways on the screens. A wide-open door here and there. Blood on the walls around them. On deck five, near Bosse’s office, some of the infected are moving towards the prow. In a corridor on deck eight more of them are milling about, apparently aimlessly. In the café a small group of people are hiding behind some upended tables; it looks like they are consoling an injured man. Others are being chased through the maze of short hallways near the stern on deck seven. Blood is spattered on the windows around the ball pit. There’s yet more blood on the walls and floor outside the karaoke bar.
But there are fewer infected than he had expected. That does nothing to put him at ease.
Where are they?
The wall of a landing in the stairwell outside the car deck is charred. A smashed vodka bottle is lying on the floor beneath it. Calle exhales. If that’s the fire that set off the alarm, it was extinguished a long time ago.
Antti pushes more buttons; more images from the ship flit past. ‘No more fire, as far as I can see,’ he says. ‘Fucking hell, wouldn’t that just have been the last bloody straw.’
Calle nods. ‘Can you find the hallway outside the suite?’
Antti pushes a few buttons; Calle tries to follow along on the screens. Spots deck nine, starboard side. The door. 9318.
‘There!’ he says. ‘Stop there!’
He leans so close to the screen he can feel the static electricity against his face.
KALLE! DON’T OPEN!
The word ‘don’t’ is thickly underlined. Calle stares at the words, his misspelt name.
Vincent can’t have written that.
A melodious signal chimes over the PA system and then he hears Marisol clear her throat. Finally.
‘Dear passengers,’ she says, ‘we have managed to stop the ship, which means that sooner or later someone will discover that something is wrong on board. It should not take long. We are just an hour or so from Finland and this is a busy sea route.’
Calle watches as people begin to congregate in the hallway on deck six. They are listening intently. Some are filming with their mobile phones, holding them up to the speaker or their own faces.
None of them are Vincent. Where is Vincent?
‘We don’t know what has happened here tonight,’ Marisol continues. ‘We know people get sick if they are bitten, but we don’t know what kind of disease it is or why there is an outbreak on board. Some of us are going to try to make it to the sun deck, at the very top of the ship. Now that we have come to a stop, we can launch the life rafts and wait in them until help arrives. Bundle up warm and join us, if you think you can. If not, stay in your cabin or wherever there is a door you can lock.’
She falls silent. Calle can almost hear her wavering. Antti is panting heavily next to him.
‘Remember that this contagion can affect anyone. If you have family or friends who have been bitten … don’t try to help them. Don’t even go near them. I understand that it’s horrible to hear, but … it’s the only way you can protect yourself from the contagion and be sure you won’t infect others.’
Pause. He can see the little group on deck six hesitate, before most of them go back into their cabins.
‘Good luck, whatever you decide to do,’ Marisol concludes. The speakers click off.
Lo tugs gently on Calle’s shirt.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asks.
She doesn’t reply, just looks at him in silence, then at the screen showing the entrance to the spa. Some kind of large machine is sitting on the floor just inside the smashed glass wall. And he can see someone moving further in. Jerkily, staggering.
‘What’s so—’ he says.
Lo quietly hushes him and glances pointedly at Albin, who is staring at the floor. And Calle breaks off and takes another look at the screen. Properly this time.
The machine is a wheelchair on its side.
He swallows, understanding who the staggering figure is. He stares at the silhouette of Albin’s mother until she is nothing but a conglomeration of pixels in various shades of grey. He reaches out and pushes a few buttons to make the creature on the other side of the broken glass disappear from the screen. Antti shoots him a glance; he has also understood.
‘Come on,’ Calle says. ‘We have to get up to the life rafts now and help anyone who wants to get out of here.’
Albin stares at him. There are no signs that he has realised they are hiding something from him.
They check the screen showing the hallway outside Bosse’s office. None o
f the infected appear to be around at the moment.
Antti opens the door a crack. Calle places himself behind the children, grabs the mop handle with the taped-on knife and turns to the screen, where a black-and-white Antti can be seen popping his head out through the door. Calle’s eyes move on to the blanket-covered figure in the office chair. Has Bosse moved? Was that the way his head was hanging?
‘Hurry up,’ he says. Antti gives him an annoyed look before stepping into the hallway.
Calle puts his hands on the children’s shoulders. Lo looks at him, mouths a thank-you.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ he whispers.
Antti hushes them. He has stopped in the middle of the hallway. His face is redder than ever. He seems to be listening for something. The knife is trembling in his hand.
And Calle feels panic seep into every limb when he hears steps approaching from a side corridor.
Someone running.
Madde
She tries to make herself stop shaking, ignore the cold, the wind, the fear and focus on the calm lapping of the waves against the hull. The gentle rocking.
The creatures moving awkwardly about the deck are nothing to her, nothing she needs to trouble herself with. Nor should she think about the fact that the thing pressing against her hipbone is an elbow. That a strange woman’s hair is draped across her face, tickling her nose. A heel is digging into her ankle. She should not think about the fact that the heel is part of a shoe, and that inside that shoe is a foot, a foot that belongs to a corpse.
No. She shouldn’t think at all. She should just make sure to stay very still.
Play dead.
She and Marianne are hiding in a pile of bodies next to the railing. It was Marianne’s idea. She pulled the long-haired woman’s body to cover the two of them. Madde is lying face-down, her nose pressed into a knitted jumper that smells like smoke and the bottom of the laundry basket. Marianne is next to her. Her body is warm, despite the wind, and reeks of layer upon layer of anxiety, perspiration, old perfume and hair dye. Madde guesses that she doesn’t smell like a bouquet of flowers herself. She can only hope the wind out here on the bow deck will disperse their scent, or that it is drowned out by the smell of the dead bodies all around them.
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